The Moon-Spinners

Back in June when TCM ran the latest installment of Treasures from the Disney Vault, one of the movies they ran was The Moon-Spinners. Not having seen it before, I decided to record it to do a post on it here.

Hayley Mills plays Nikky Ferris, who's visiting Crete with her aunt Francis (Joan Greenwood), the aunt having come to record the local folk songs because she's a musicologist. When they get to one of the small towns, there's a big party for a wedding, and the local hotelier, running a hotel called the "Moon-Spinner" is reluctant to put up any foreigners. Eventually they relent and let out a room to Nikky and Francis.

It turns out that there's already one other foreigner at the hotel, and he too is an Englishman, Mark Camford (Peter McEnery). He's taking the boat out on the bay and doing skin diving, and when Nikky meets him he's willing to take her skin diving too. But we see right away there's something else up because Mark realizes he's being watched by Stratos (Eli Wallach), brother of the hotel's owner, while Mark is going out diving.

Mark decides to go out again at night, when he hears Stratos go out on the bay, and it's now that we learn just why Stratos doesn't want him or any other foreigner around. He's looking for something out on the bay, and views Mark as a threat, to the point that he and his henchmen are willing to shoot at Mark! Mark takes refuge in an abandoned church, and when Nikky can't find him the next morning, she goes looking for him.

Mark doesn't want to get Nikky involved, but it's not as if he's got much choice. And of course that involvement is going to get Nikky in danger. Eventually Mark lets on to Nikky that Mark was a bank worker who one day, instead of letting a customer open the safety deposit box themselves, couriered a bunch of jewels to the customer. It was here that he was hit over the head by a stranger, and the jewels went missing. Mark's detective work has led him to believe the jewels are here, and probably in that bay.

The Moon-Spinners is a fairly light thriller. I'd guess that girls of the right age to look up to the Hayley Mills character (Mills was 18 at the time she made it, so probably the 10-13 age range, maybe a little older) will really enjoy it. It's got just enough danger to keep younger people excited, but is never really threatening. Boys will probably be bored, and parents will probably like the non-threatening part. It's competently made, and the parts that were filmed on location in Greece are lovely to look at. But it's also a rather slight movie, never to be remembered as much more than a pleasant diversion.

Still, I think you could do far worse than The Moon-Spinners.